Despite hit ratings for the recent HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us , a multiplayer spin-off for the zombie shooter based on the first game’s Factions mode has struggled in development. Bloomberg reported in June that Sony had diverted resources away from the project following a negative internal review by Bungie, the recently acquired live-service powerhouse behind Destiny 2 . One source now tells Kotaku that the multiplayer game, while not completely canceled, is basically on ice at this point.
So their CEO is stepping down and their best studio just wasted 3 years on a GAAS project for TLOU that failed and now their best studio is laying off devs without severance and telling them to be hush about it.
So where are the DOOM and GLOOM articles pouring out that would happen if literally any other game company was going through this?
Doesn’t count, we should be glad the game is cancelled, and people wasted years of their time on a product that will never see the light of day and lost their jobs to boot!
Sorry, I can’t reply to this as im reading the hundreds of articles that have been getting posted today about all this stuff. lol
Anyway, Sony is going through some shit and they need to fix up their shit but as long as they have their first party exclusives and an extremely blind loyal fan base, they’ll be looked at as being just fine no matter what.
Speculation- Sonys GaaS initiative is a complete disaster behind the scenes and very costly. This pushed Jimbo to early retirement before shit hits the fan.
The thing that irks me is the fact that, if even one of these things were happening on the Xbox side of things, the Doom&Gloom articles and traffic would be deafening. We’ve seen said “D&G” for Xbox with much less.
You have:
all of what’s stated in the OP happening around the same time (CEO leaving, layoffs, cancelled huge game by premier studio)
no roadmap for first party
an abysmal PlayStation Showcase
pricehikes galore
cancelled KoTOR Remake, Sony published game heavily pushed by PlayStation since the original is associated with Xbox; quietly deleted all social media and videos associated with it
reports from Jason Schierer (of all people) that PlayStation devs are worried about the internal push towards GaaS + lackluster VR support + a subpar handheld that nobody is asking for (and is outclassed by old Switch tech)
…and nothing. Not a peep. You even have my last bullet having it’s dedicated topic locked on Era (despite being from Jason Schierer which they idolize) because fanboys are trying to damage control and hush-hush the situation.
The disparity is just insane and nobody, and I mean nobody, can say otherwise.
With SEGA cancelling a live service title far into development, and multiple places laying off staff (including QA), none of these issues are exclusive to Sony and rather it could be argued that we’re seeing industry-wide issues.
The fact that Epic and Sony are doing it should be cause for concern.
There are obvious explanations. One of which is that we’re in a recession whether anyone likes to admit it or not. The other being that Live Service titles are, like AAA titles, will be dominated by a few players. Fall Guys couldn’t pull its weight (an unfair expectation put on it, truthfully) and it had a small part to play in this (probably unfair to put this on it). This raises interesting questions for Tatanka.
Both of which are interesting topics that likely deserves their own threads rather than being discussed in this one so I’ll leave it there.
Sony are the most vulnerable video game manufacturer right now. They are tied to a business model that has very little growth potential and their attempts to alter that model are behind the curve and seemingly disastrous,
The plain facts are starting to sink into peoples brains. Console sales are flat and hardly make money. Games development of the sort of big aaa games that Sony use to drive sales are costing more and mores, taking longer and longer and the risk is higher and higher. Sony therefore pivot to gaas but did so too late when the market is saturated and in doing so have caused internal issues with their dev teams. And their aggressive third party moneyhat are failing a ms publishers realise that even though Sony lead the hardware sales, their ability to push third party software is quite low….
Microsoft meanwhile have a business model that creates an automatic content creation, curation and development budget. They can use that to build all sorts of games, take risks and create and curate content that appeals to broader groups of people. They can use that to expand their market and the wider games market. Offering a chance at growth beyond 100m consoles. They already offer their content on more devices than Sony ever will or can….today……
This has been the case for a while but people are only just waking up to it.
And certain forums would have already surpassed 20 pages…like one hour after being posted
But noooo, theres no bias against everything Xbox does. NOTHING, nada…what make you guys believe that?! How muted it feels with recent PS news compared to, lets say, the HUGE scandal made by people when a single dev leave an xbox studio?!
All of that sounds like the result of poor planning on Sony’s part, but it’s all actually Xbox’s fault for ruining the gaming industry while in third place. You can’t blame the market leader for chasing industry trends.
Sorry to see Naughty Dog waste their time and effort on a multiplayer GAAS project that’s going nowhere. That time and effort could have been spent on Uncharted 5.
I love this actually. Feels really good to stand up when no one was backing me and calling me fanboy or whatever generic nonsense, then tell everyone that time will prove me right. Love it.
I was a frustrated PS5 owner and was raising red flags to warn people about my frustrations. Basically nobody was willing to listen. Ultimately I sold my PS5. Now I can finally point out how right I was because all of the things I was warning people about are coming to pass. Last of Us is just one of many of my concerns that has proven right. People might with the power of hindsight be able to say these things as unpredictable, but I was saying it first, and people were calling them wild fanboy takes. I didn’t get dragged into the mud sling , I said I’d wait to be proven right. Now the day has come
